The Promised Call

By: Rihana Eri Salinas

My mother's beloved phone rang one late afternoon as the sun was about to set, striking orange patterns in the sky. My mother who was once always excited to pick up a call, turned into shaking and trembling hands as she picked her phone up, like she somehow knew what lies beyond that call. I silently watched her as she pressed the answer button, and softly put it to her ear. Her voice was very calm as she spoke into a language I can't speak. It was the usual language only my father and mother knew- something foreign and secret, just like a song I had never practiced. I pretended to play with my toys that I always hated playing with, and I listened to every rise and fall of her tone which made my heart suffer.

Then her voice cracked. Not loud, but fragile, like glass. Moments later, her knees buckled, and she dropped the phone. It hit the floor with a sharp, hollow sound. “NO,” she cried, one of the few words I understood. She snatched the phone again, pressed it to her ear, shouted something I couldn’t decipher, then threw the phone to the tiles so hard it shattered. A piece of the back cover slid all the way under the table.

For a moment, the whole house stopped breathing. She turned to me with eyes swollen and shining. She pulled me into her arms so tightly I felt her ribs shake against mine. “Your father…” she whispered, “is going back to Brazil.” Brazil? I blinked, confused. I thought it was just for the Rio Olympics, the one I had seen on TV. Athletes, colors, fireworks. I thought he would come home with a souvenir or maybe even call again. I didn’t understand why my mother cried as if the world had ended.

Later that night, she told me he wasn’t sure when he’d return. She said he promised he would. But her voice trembled too much for me to believe it. Something inside her sounded defeated. Broken. Like the phone on the floor. I only understood years later that my father wasn’t leaving for work or for sports or for anything I could name. He was leaving because he had another life waiting for him— another family.  A life that didn’t include us anymore.

Days passed... Months... Years... My mother bought a new phone. It reminds me that everything changed with a single call. 

My father called for a goodbye. 

I kept the dead phone. Still waiting for a promise that was never made.